An external look at local urban solutions

Ecuadornews:

The majority of visitors to the linear park of the Valladolid cooperative (Isla Trinitaria) did not admit what María Obando Delgado told them. “It is true. Until recently, here where you walk there was a whole neighborhood. The same about the estuary. “

As they did not believe her, this woman, who came to live in the sector 26 years ago, resorted to the lags of that recent past that were still present in the environment. She pointed to the tips blackened by the sediment that jutted out of the mud on a low-tide morning. They are the remains of stilt houses on which until two or three years ago the sugarcane houses were built.

“It is surprising that in what is now a recreational area, there has been a neighborhood. Where are their former inhabitants? “Asked Lissette Molina, an architect from cuenca who arrived in the city to join the Second Ecuadorian Congress of Studies of the City, attended by academics and professionals in urban planning, who analyzed the coexistence in the spaces public, urban mobility, climate change and social production of habitat in population centers.

That is why the Valladolid cooperative was in the path that was defined so that several of the participants of the event visited it. Also on the roadmap that morning appeared a tour of Socio Vivienda, the housing complex to which the families that settled illegally in the lands surrounding the estuary were transferred and on which the last central government developed section 4 of the ‘Guayaquil ecological’ project, which pursues the recovery of the Salado.

Precisely that was the objective of this congress that during four days was developed in the Catholic University of Santiago de Guayaquil (UCSG). “We want to awaken a critical and multidisciplinary interest of some professionals in issues of the city that can be deepened in research and that in turn can come up with proposals for applied solutions, both in a particular way and in a public way,” Gabriela told newspaper EXPRESO Durán Tapia, coordinator of the architecture works of the faculty of the UCSG, who accompanied the group as part of the organizers.

“It was a confrontational trip. We were able to specify the social impact that the transfer generated, “said Ana Solano de la Sala, Guayaquil architect with a long career.  “We found the people of the estuary residing in Socio Vivienda, but complaining about problems of insecurity and lack of many services. They have clean water, but unhealthy. “

The trip ended at Samanes Park. In the end, the evaluation that could be made by those who made up this tour could have been similar to that of Gabriela Durán and Ana Solano: the governments in turn only look at the quantitative and not the qualitative.

An example of this: Housing Partner’s solutions were designed with a floor-to-ceiling height of 2.20 meters. “The majority are Afro-Ecuadorian people have a lot of height,” said one of the participants of this town-planning event. (I)

Source: https://www.expreso.ec/guayaquil/urbanismo-planificacion-esterosalado-vivienda-guayaquil-BX2437344